Moving On

I was at a vintage trailer rally in Ojai, CA this past weekend and found this in a thrift store.  These are labels from Biggers Bees, an apiary run by George Biggers in the 60's and 70's.  He appeared many times on TV showing off his bee beard and was a favorite of Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Last week I thought I had sealed off the hive from ants.  I returned yesterday to discover they had crossed the moat on debris in the water and found the single tiny break in the band of Tanglefoot.  Since this will be a continuing problem with honey left in the combs, I decided to clean out the hive.  I removed all the comb and all the ants I could find after I had fixed barrier problem.  I put the hive back together and put out the Space Available sign.  Maybe someone will move in now with the ants gone and no wax moth damage to fix.

This is the first batch of comb, my wax melter is not that big.  It will be a long job.  The honey still in the comb is not capped so I do not plan on trying to salvage it.  I shall see if I can adapt the solar cooker I have to increase the amount of wax I can process.  This method works but will be painfully slow give the amount of comb it can hold.

There are some of the queen cells I removed.  The one on the left had two queens,  Most located on the bottom of the frames but a couple were mid frame

Once this was done I took a chance, wearing only the hood, I popped the lid off the twitchy bees and added another super to that hive.  It is now five high and I surely do not want these girls to swarm.  I had the top off for less than three minutes but I still had a couple guard bees come by and yell at me.  No stings and I retreated as soon as the top was back on.  

A Couple Notes

The Backwards Beekeepers meeting was yesterday where I planned to demo the Solar Wax Melter but the weather did not cooperate at all.  I had guessed this would happen so I processed  some of the Pierce Hive Capture comb earlier in the week.

This was after 3-4 hours of sunlight.  I left it for a couple more days and it reduced more.

This was old comb and very dark, it does not produce much wax and you end up with all the dark stuff on the paper filter.  That is slumgum.  It does not look good and you could throw it way.  Don't do that unless you have a lot of it.  The slumgum and the underlying paper make excellent swarm lure.  Just tear off a piece and put it in a hive that is empty.  You might get a swarm with out any work or using a Bee Vac.

Speaking of the Bee Vac, Rob of Bushkill Farms was the originator of the first Bee Vac I saw and his plans were the inspiration for the one made for me.  Rob is now selling his Bee Vac and has a website where you can order one.  If your woodworking skills are limited and you need a Bee Vac, this is a fine option for you.  Do check out the discussion of the Bee Vac on his regular site.  There are a number of observations that might be helpful if you want to make your own.

On the lighter side, check out Max Wong's blog, My Roman Apartment and her adventure playing a beekeeper in a Kashi commercial.  It has not been aired yet.  Watch for  it.

Simple Solar Wax Melter

This is my version of a solar wax melter that I have seen on Linda's Bees and other sites.  It is the cheapest comb processor there is and it works. 

The first thing you need is a cheap styrofoam cooler

Paint the inside with dark paint, a flat black spray paint is best

Get a container that fits in the cooler box, add some water and then spread a paper towel across the top. Then secure it, a rubber band can work.   Put your wax on top of the towel..

Cover it with a pane of glass or plastic and set it in the sun.  The glass is to keep any nosy bees away and still let the sun heat things up.

The clean wax will flow through the towel and drop into the water.  What is left is the slumgum, all of that dark stuff left by the bees dirty feet.  This small bit of wax was in the sun for about two hours.  I left to to go do some other things so it might have been done much earlier.  Throw away the slum gum.

The wax will drop into the water so you can gather it without it sticking to the container.

This was not a lot of wax but it was from the partial frame of comb that had fallen out of the frame that I mentioned a couple posts back.  It is clean and I will save it for later use.

This is the wee pile of clean wax next to a tablespoon measure. Small but lovely and clean and nothing like the dark wad of wax I started with..

From Wikipedia: Slumgum is a term used in beekeeping. Slumgum is the residue of the beeswax rendering process. When the beeswax from brood comb is melted it contains not only wax but also the pupal lining, wax moth cocoons, excrements from larvae, and other residual debris. Less slumgum can be expected from rendering of cappings or honey comb. In the rendering process, the slumgum is separated from clean wax. Slumgum is slightly heavier than wax and sticks to the bottom of the wax cake. It is brown to black in color, and burns readily. Melted slumgum can be poured over pine cones to make fire starters

 There are bigger and better ways to deal with your wax but most of us Backwards Beekeepers are very small scale beeks collecting honey using crush and strain.  This method of rendering the wax  should work fine.   I do have an old solar oven that I will adapt to melt the wax but it is not high on my list atg the moment.   If you have a lot of wax you want to do at one time cheese cloth might work to replace the paper towel which cannot carry a big load of wax. .  I don't have enough wax to try that yet.  You need something that lets the liquid wax flow through and keep out the slumgum.

There are all sorts of things you can do with the wax other than making clean starter strips.  Check the main bee supply places like LA Honey,  Brushy Mountain and Mann Lake.   They have books and equipment to help you make candles, lip balm and all sorts of other useful things.